The journey is the destination.

Day 35: White Horse Tea House

Shane’s underground tea house

Afternoon Journaling

Shane and I made a freestyle video together this morning and we decided to talk about the “White Horse Tea House”, his soon-to-be #1 in Milwaukee (Wisconsin?) restaurant on TripAdvisor! Maybe… 🙂 That’s a thought derived from this video about how a guy made a fake restaurant the #1 restaurant in London on TripAdvisor:

That little freestyle session got me thinking about doing a podcast. I’ve been thinking about doing a podcast for a LONG time. A friend and I actually even made a couple episodes of a podcast over 10 years ago. We’ll see what happens… what’s in my mind right now is doing a podcast on Sundays at the new apartment… hmmm…

Yesterday I wrote this…

In Flight

I’m becoming a podcast addict! It’s crazy! You can just listen in on masters of any range of subjects talk about what they’re passionate about. This morning I listened to another episode of Masters of Scale, this time featuring Nancy Lublin. What’s awesome about this episode is that I got to hear about her involvement behind a nonprofit I recently ran into called Do Something. Do Something is EXTREMELY in alignment with some of the things I’d like to accomplish in life! Even more exciting I learned about her new venture called Crisis Text Line.

The story behind Crisis Text Line is awesome. It was born at Do Something. Do Something is setup to motivate teens to… well… do something! They were focused on using email to motivate teens to do something with little success. One day someone decided to try using text messages to reach them and BAM! It was extremely successful. Things were rocking and rolling for a long time and people eventually started writing back to the texts. A young girl sent text describing a horrible situation she was in and that prompted the creation of Crisis Text Line.

Crisis Text Line is a volunteer-powered service which provides counseling to people in crisis via text. Nancy started with connecting people to crisis lines that already existed but, with testing, she learned that she would be better off training her own staff, so that’s what she did!

Here’s where the excitement starts! She’s mastering the art of training a volunteer-powered remote workforce to help! This is EXACTLY what I’d like to do, just more specific to people with bipolar disorder. I’d also like communication to take place BEFORE crisis as well!

Something REALLY specific that I’d like to accomplish right now is providing crisis support for US expats who run into mental health issues. Navigating the mental health system inside the US is already extremely complex. Adding a foreign country, foreign language and foreign culture in the mix can create a nightmare situation. What I’ve decided to do is sign up to be a volunteer, (I hope I’m accepted! It’s like applying for a job!) Then I can learn how the whole system works. Maybe I can even work something out to work with them to bring a “lite” version of the service to Taiwan as a test… We’ll see what happens!

Wrap Up

It’s harder setting aside time to write while traveling! We’ll be on the road a lot tomorrow on the way to grandma’s house.